


Ecstasy of Gold

by pokey_jr



Series: The Yeehaw Chronicles [8]
Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, Limpany infinite gold glitch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-12
Updated: 2020-06-12
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:41:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24671764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pokey_jr/pseuds/pokey_jr
Summary: A discovery tests Arthur’s loyalty to Dutch. Based on the infinite gold bars glitch in Limpany.
Series: The Yeehaw Chronicles [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1236257
Comments: 7
Kudos: 58





	Ecstasy of Gold

**Author's Note:**

> follow this link to see the glitch, which has long been patched.  
> https://youtu.be/8NhZU0j0jnw?t=105
> 
> Title taken from Ennio Morricone's soundtrack.  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYI09PMNazw

_There are two kinds of people, those with guns and those who do the digging._

**

Out near Horseshoe Overlook, there was a burned out town called Limpany, right on the river. The first time Arthur saw it, he rode down to it, whistling idly and wondering why a town primed for flooding caught fire and couldn’t be put out. Arson? Incompetence? A bonfire gone out of control?

Whatever disaster had come left the skeleton standards of frontier towns. A saloon, a jail, general store, and of course, the sheriff’s office. Arthur poked around in the remains, turning up a few cans of peas-- he thought briefly about cooking them up with some of the bison meat he’d hunted the day earlier, make a proper meal for once. (In the end, too much effort. Thyme, oregano, or mint would do for seasoning.)

Not much here, but that wasn’t surprising. This place was an easy target for looters and scavengers, and Arthur thought he wasn’t so full of himself to deny he fit the bill of the latter. One more place would be worth checking: usually there was a lock box kept in the Sheriff’s office. Whether someone else had already managed to pry it open was another matter.

Arthur ambled across the muddy square, in no real hurry to open a cache he expected to be empty, or contain, at most, a hundred dollars. This afternoon wasn’t a complete waste. He’d found a couple of cigarette cards, and one of them completed the Gunslingers set. That buffoon collecting them at the rail stop near the bridge would be mighty pleased, and the promised reward was a little more cash Arthur could squirrel away without giving a cut to camp. 

Giving to camp meant, in truth, giving to Dutch, which he was beginning to think was a poor investment, not that he knew much about investment. He was more acquainted with stealing from banks than doing honest business, they all were-- and oh, there was the lock box. 

He’d seen enough of them, and opened enough of them, that it was no longer a thrill. He wouldn’t get his hopes up.

Arthur unsheathed his knife and forced the lid open.

Gold. Good. 

Not much, just a bar. 

There was no evidence, really, that Dutch knew a whole lot about investment either, he thought as he admired the shine of it. 

Something strange happened when he picked it up. His vision fuzzed and when he could see clearly again, there was another bar in its place. He blinked, rubbed his eyes, tested the gold in his hand with his knife. The blade scored the surface easily. It was real. He set it aside, and reached for the other one. Blurry again. And then a second bar in hand, and a third in the box. 

His breath caught for a moment; he was acutely aware of his heartbeat. This wasn’t possible. Surely he was hallucinating. Too much tobacco?

“Fuck,” Arthur said. He shook his head and rubbed his eyes vigorously and kept them firmly shut, feeling out for the metal blindly. It was there, cool and smooth. With a deep breath to clear the odd feeling of longing from his chest, he opened his eyes and gazed at it. Still there. 

So he tried it again. And again. Some giddy compulsion drove him, like a prospector striking upon the richest vein, he had to have more, more than he could carry, until a realization punctured his ecstasy. 

Dutch. He would have to show Dutch. He had to tell him, this was all their problems solved. There was a tidy stack of bullion next to Arthur, and yet another bar waiting in the lock box, its shine dulled from dust and grime. He sat by the gold for a time that lasted five cigarettes and a half bottle of whiskey. Plenty of time to agonize over the matter. Never had existed a more seductive figure than Dutch Van der Linde. As tempting as any high class girl in Saint Denis, all done up and charming to boot, and beneath it a towering ego. _He raised you to worship him_ , Hosea had told Arthur once, and Arthur thought that was the most honest thing Hosea had ever said. 

After stubbing out his last cigarette, he rose, swaying a bit, and whistled for Boadicea. She cantered right up to him, right through the gaping hole in the burned out wall and onto the creaking floorboards. Dependable as ever. She got two apples and some pats on the neck and soft words before anything else. Then, with no real hurry, he packed her saddlebags with as many bars as wouldn’t overburden her. 

Arthur Morgan had often wondered what he would do if he was given an out from Dutch’s gang. An easy out, something clean, with minimal effort. It was only ever an idle thought, and usually rested on Mary’s family having a miraculous revelation as to his true character, or else having a run of luck in poker so spectacular that he’d surely be accused of cheating. Both were too distant to even have the whiff of shame he expected to feel about entertaining a betrayal of Dutch. He didn’t bother writing them in his journal, and it would be foolish to speak of the wish to anyone, even Hosea.

He’d been offered before, by the Pinkertons. Finger Dutch and be pardoned. Arthur’s education was patchwork— spending the cold months in schoolhouses as a boy, and the warm ones moving on to some other town, with little progress to show— but he wasn’t a fool. Turning Dutch in would be a messy break, like a snapped bone that had broken through skin. Grisly and painful. The sort of injury no one expects you to recover from. 

That encounter with the Agents Milton and Ross by the river hadn’t been a real test, anyway. Not with little Jack there, a reminder of what should have been. Examples needed setting, and John sure as hell wasn’t doing it. With Arthur gone, someone else would have to worry about what would become of the boy. 

**

The gold was a strange thing. Its smell lingered on his hands, and its allure chased him night and day, illuminated paths he had never thought of taking. 

Back west once more. To New Austin with fifty thousand dollars, why, he could do anything and be anyone. East or north into the mountains, he could survive for years on his own, off the land. Tempting. 

Arthur rode back to camp with a weight on his heart. 

**

The daily activities of his companions took on a tinge of desperation in his eyes. He began seeing more and more opportunities to antagonize Dutch and the others, and Arthur had never been a man who thought himself above that kind of entertainment.

“Not Miller again. That hack’s really taken you in, hasn’t he?” Arthur wandered past Dutch’s tent one morning, cup of coffee in hand. Hardly different than the way Dutch had taken in Arthur and John and the rest of the gang. 

“You could stand to learn a thing or two, Arthur. Is that a new shirt?”

“No.” 

It was. 

Dutch got that same old mean look in his eye for when he knew somebody was lying. Arthur knew it well. How many times, as a young man, had he sat sulking while Dutch interrogated him about withholding money from the camp stash. Only ever a little, Arthur reasoned. He only ever kept a dollar, maybe up to ten if it was a big take. At the very least, funds enough to replace any ammunition he’d spent, and Arthur counted every shot he took, whether on horseback or crawling in the dirt or facing down an oncoming train. Hosea said he was some kind of genius that way. Anyway, he had learned not to do it— that is, take money or count his shots— until he got to be bigger than Dutch. 

Arthur hooked a thumb in his belt and leveled a stare right back at him. “Why are you asking, old man? You like it?”

**

Karen was drunk and rosy-cheeked and singing that bawdy song about the girl in Berryville. Arthur found himself slack-jawed gazing at her across the campfire and wondering why he’d never wanted to fuck her before. A cheap, tawdry thing like her wouldn’t be so bad. Even had a certain appeal. Maybe tonight, he could take her behind the supply wagon, hell, she’d been hinting forever that she wouldn’t mind a tryst. Then John came along and interrupted his view of Karen’s magnificent tits.

“Well if it ain’t little Johnny Marston,” he leered.

“Don’t start, Arthur.”

“I wouldn’t drink too deeply if I were you. Feller like you would find a way to drown in a rain puddle.”

“Why are you even drinking? Like you’ve got something to celebrate. Dutch told everyone you’ve been refusing to help Strauss, and you ain’t been on missions since--”

“‘Course, if you did, Jack could always save you,” said Arthur over him loudly. “Been teaching the boy to swim myself and he’s taken to it like a fish. I would say he’s a natural but clearly it don’t run in the family.”

John glowered at him, but Arthur took no notice of it, gazing again across the campfire at nothing in particular. In his mind, he cast himself far and west across the plains and the mountains, with no name anymore and no one to find him.

**

Arthur’s imaginings began to take him beyond even the frontier of New Austin, though it was hardly a frontier anymore. Not with the rail lines feeling blindly into the empty spaces. East and West had joined thirty years ago and grown vines like ivy, with new railroads reaching to every little settlement that had hopes of becoming a destination. Why, Arthur wondered, would anyone take the trouble of getting so far away from civilization only to shout and wave for it to come closer again? 

**

“And here he is: the man with the plan,” drawled Arthur, uncaring whether the rest of the camp heard him or not. “And Miss O’Shea, too. Are you in on the plan, Miss O’Shea? Is that what he’s always whispering in your ear about? Maybe he thinks he’ll find some grand inspiration under your skirts.”

Molly O’Shea flushed an ugly brick color that clashed with her red hair. 

**

“There’s a price on your head. You know that, Arthur.”

Arthur looked up from the magazine he was reading. Dutch’s warning tone held a lot less interest than the article about some ‘national park’, which included stirring illustrations of men standing next to trees larger and taller than buildings. It crossed Arthur’s mind that if he ever saw those trees, his journal would be too small to sketch them in, though he would want to try. Maybe he could buy a new journal, or a canvas the size of a wall, the likes of which Charles Châtenay assured him existed in the faraway salons of London, Rome, and Paris.

“Five _thousand_ , Arthur,” said Dutch sharply, taking a draw on his cigar. To Arthur’s eye, he looked a lot like the oil and railroad barons-- Leviticus Cornwall and his ilk-- those men they were all supposed to hate. Dutch’s waistcoat of red and black brocade shone handsomely, and yet compared to the shabbiness of the rest of the camp and its inhabitants, could only be considered ostentatious. Its glare was too bright under a high noon sun. Arthur squinted up at him. “Is this your way of saying you’re planning on collecting the bounty?”

Dutch pulled up the one rickety chair under the tent, sat, and leaned forward, elbows on knees. For a moment, he let the tension ratchet tighter, notch by notch, and Arthur was certain the answer would be ‘yes’. His hand clenched the pages of the magazine, ready to snap draw his hidden pistol. He would run, if he had to. This could all be left behind.

He was suitably taken aback when Dutch said, “no. Should I?” Every uncharitable, traitorous feeling toward the man scuttled back into the crevices where they belonged. 

“If I’m worth five, you’re worth ten, Dutch.”

“I’m flattered you think so, Arthur.”

**

The ride to the fence was a long one, and Arthur slept in the saddle with his rifle across his lap. Leaving camp had not been much of an affair at all. Everybody was used to him riding out with weeks’ worth of food and supplies, counting on him to return with food and money and treasures for them. No one wished him a final goodbye, especially after his months of antagonizing them. Only the boy watched him go, more shrewdly than any four year old should. Arthur did not bid him farewell, lying in his heart that he might come back sometime. Twenty miles out, forty miles out, sixty miles, a hundred… Jack will grow up good and strong, despite everything. Jack might remember him.

There had been no catalyst for Arthur’s ultimate departure. Weeks later, he couldn’t even recall which day it had happened. It took a long span of time for Arthur to figure out that loyalty to Dutch and loyalty to Dutch’s ideals were many separate things. It was all irreversibly knotted together, anyway. Loyalty to Dutch meant putting Dutch first, but that particular moral was one he’d painted over in so many pretty colors about family and who deserves what, Arthur had to grow up three times over to even begin to see the real. 

He had. It had taken time, but the paint peeled with age. The more world Dutch had shown him, the more he’d had to compare to the man who’d installed himself in Arthur’s life as some amalgam of older brother and father. 

He counted along the posts due south from the oak tree, nineteen down. It was slow work digging the sack out from under the post under which he had buried it months ago, and slow work packing all the bullion into the space he’d left in Boadicea’s saddlebags. She was restless, stamping excitedly until he gave her a few peppermints. Sly thing. The pace was fine. There would be no one along to disturb him. This barren ranch had not seen cattle or any other civilization for about sixty years. Doubting he would ever see this exact vista again, Arthur got out his journal and made a sketch: the chaparral in the foreground, fence and trees in the mid, sky and mountains beyond. His back and shoulders were sore from the labor, there was more dirt under his fingernails than usual, and he felt, more than he ever had before, a huge swell of joy looking out toward where the sun would set. 

Mounted back in the saddle, Arthur twitched the reins, turning Boadicea westward, kicking his heels. All of a sudden she surged forth impatiently into a gallop and the scenery streamed past them freely in her speed. As quick as he caught his breath, he let out a wild shout and held onto his hat. The gold was a light load, hardly a burden. Nothing could weigh them down.


End file.
